Kurdish Issue
BY DERYA SAZAK Aug 12, 2005
Source: Turkish daily paper, Milliyet
MILLIYET- Before his visit to Diyarbakir, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
told a group of intellectuals whom he met with on Wednesday that the Kurdish
issue is a matter of democratization. After the terrorist PKK restarted attacks
in recent months, circles in the southeast representing the Kurdish political
movement expected that if Erdogan were to emphasize civilian and democratic
solutions instead of the military and go back to the reformist line his
government followed until last December, the tension in Turkey would fall. After
giving the expected message, Erdogan will go to Diyarbakir today after
recognizing the existence of the Kurdish problem. During his meeting with
intellectuals, Erdogan gave the message that solutions to a wide range of issues
can be found in the constitutional order as part of freedom and in line with the
democratic republic. However, like former prime ministers, Erdogan doesn’t
actually say what he’s going to do to solve the Kurdish issue.
One day before Erdogan’s meeting with the intellectuals, Parliament Spokesman
Cemil Cicek emphasized that we were late in joining the political shaping in
northern Iraq because some people had neglected Turkey’s interests out of spite
for [late President Turgut] Ozal. We all know from the discussions during the
Gulf War that Ozal was planning a federation. Likewise, Iraq’s invasion provided
Kurds in northern Iraq with this opportunity. The Iraqi Republic and its new
constitution will stress Arab and Kurdish rights. When Turkey saw that it wasn’t
included in the process over northern Iraq during the US’ plans to invade Iraq,
it rejected the deployment of US troops in Turkey. If Turkey had allowed the US
to open a northern front, would the situation be different now? I think not. The
post-Saddam period in Iraq was drawn when the US banned flights in the area
north of the 36th parallel. Ozal wanted nothing but to be the protector of Kurds
as a US ‘subcontract.’ Now 15 years later, Turkey is obliged to recognize its
‘own Kurds’ while at the same time dealing with the political problems brought
by the Iraq invasion and the PKK terrorism. I wonder what democratic opening
Erdogan will bring to the Kurdish issue.
